If you have tiger mother tendencies, the very worst thing you can do is visit China. It will only increase your determination to squeeze some achievement out of your young. And you know how popular that makes us.

I have just spent some time researching for The Economist in Chengdu, a place described, perfectly accurately by its mayor, as "one of the world's top 300 cities". Even a new-build urban centre many Londoners haven't heard of shows off youthful elites who can chat away in fluent English.

They have transformed themselves in China's growth sprint from backwater kids into a generation that aspires to study in the West and spends its teenage years diligently swotting to get to America (top choice) and Britain (for the near-misses). On my way, I met an orphan who wound up taking the international baccalaureate in Wales, going to an American college and who now owns a mining business, "because you can't make enough money working on Wall Street these days".

Another had trained as a concert pianist and won a place at the Cincinnati Conservatory, where he turned up owning a single suitcase and £600 - his family's entire wealth. These weren't children of the "princelings" - the high officials whose sons race around in BMWs and wear Vuitton. They were China's middle class, but as motivated as the entire British Olympic team put together.

Naturally, this rubbed off. I spent three nights calling home at Lost in Translation hours, listening to the refrain of the British schoolchild, "I've already done half an hour's French", and the greatest fable of them all, "I haven't got any more homework to do".

"Do the youth of Chengdu say such things," I asked Michelle, our interpreter, as my distant household explained why Halloween was much more important than boning up on some more history? She thought not. "There would be a very bad mood in the house." Now that I can manage.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London think tank which set up our exploration of Chengdu, sent a lot of us home full of renewed zeal. If millions of Chinese sit over their homework till 11 o'clock, surely two hours might not be too much to ask of their London equivalents? My children enjoy the joke in Glee, that an A-minus grade to a Westerner is an F to a Chinese parent. I just worry this is too true to be funny.

Still, our easeful sons and daughters might just be ahead of the next trend. Younger Chinese women tell me they're not so keen on the manic rush to join the tiger club. There's rapid growth in the numbers of "double income, no kids" Chinese Dinkies who rise to good jobs, find a partner - and put off having children to enjoy the spoils of their labours.

"I'm not sure I want to push my children as hard as I was pushed," says one. She thinks the tiger mothers belong to the gold rush of the first decade of the 2000s. A column in the Shanghai Daily explores whether there is more to life than just succeeding.

Fine, I'll tell them back home. Just bring me a few Asian Fs in the end-of-term report - and throw in a scholarship to the conservatory while you're at it.